Information to help you to
find whether or not a Scottish Archive holds
records to help you in your search for information.

Searching the Online Catalogue
will allow you to find out:

What archives are held
in Scotland

Where they are held

Specific information about
collections, including:

A brief summary of the
contents of the collection

Information about the
people/organisations who created them

Links to contributing archives'
search rooms to find out more

The catalogue summaries the
contents of collections of historical records
and tells you where to go to see them. Each
entry in the catalogue contains:

Reference code:
The reference that you will quote to the archive.
This is a unique code, allocated by SCAN in
conjunction with the archive holding the collection,
used to distinguish one archive collection
from another.

Title:
The name of the collection.

Dates: The covering
dates for material contained in the collection.

Level of description:
The level at which the collection has been
described. Most of our descriptions are at
the most general level, the collection. A
collection is the archive material created
by, or collected by an organisation or individual.
For example: the records created or inherited
by a local authority, the papers of a landed
family. Sometimes we have described the records
in more detail, this is where a very general
description only would not cover the collection
in sufficient depth.

Extent: This
gives you an idea about how big the collection
is, obviously a collection occupying 80m of
shelving is going to contain a lot more records
and information than one of 1cm.

Name of creator:
The name of the person/s or organisation/s
responsible for the creation or collection
of the material.

Administrative
History or Biographical History:
To give you background information on the
person or organisation responsible for the
creation of the records.

Scope and content:
Will summarise the main records within the
collection and pick out particular items thought
to be important. It does not include every
item but aims to give a general overview of
the types of records to be found.

Conditions governing
access:
If the archive has restrictions on access
to the collection we will tell you.

Language: Most records
are in English but sometimes the records are
in Latin, Scots or other languages.

Finding aids:
Whether the archive holding the collection
has finding aids on paper, on computer or
has placed copies elsewhere, for example,
the National Register of Archives for Scotland.

Related material:
Sometimes the records of a family, individual
or business end up in more than one archive
or in more than one collection, we will supply
cross references to them where practicable.